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For the Town Council, short work. Really short.

When the Mammoth Lakes Town Council finally adjourned Wednesday night, practically everybody in the council chambers snapped to their cellphones or wristwatches to just see how long the meeting had lasted.

"I make it 14 minutes," said an astonished Police Chief Dan Watson.

Fourteen *minutes?*

This, from a deliberative body that is notorious for dragging things well into the night.

In fact, if there is a single expression that characterizes a Mammoth Town Council meeting, it's the 9:30 p.m. yawn.

This one was so odd that couple of people wandered into the chambers expecting a meeting, only to find out that they'd missed the whole enchilada.

"I've been serving on the council for a long time," said council member Rick Wood. I served from 1998 to 2006, and now again. This is the shortest meeting I can ever remember.

"The most I spoke was leading the Pledge of Allegiance."

Two council members were absent. Mayor Skip Harvey was on a leave of absence so he can recover from illness. John Eastman was no show, too, leaving just Wood, Matt Lehman and Mayor Pro Tem Jo Bacon.

"We stretched it out as long as we could," joked Bacon.

"The Mayor Pro Tem really knows how to run a meeting," said Wood.

The council actually did get a piece of business done. It approved (unanimously!) a date to interview the 11 people who are lined up to become recreation commissioners. And they listened to a brief John Wentworth report, he of the Mammoth Lakes Trails and Public Access outfit.

When the meeting got underway, just 10 people were in the room other than the council members, and all but four were town staff members of one sort of another. Of the four from the citizenry, two were reporters.

Was it that they wanted to dash home for the baseball playoffs? No. Not a single member of the council expressed the slightest interest in the Minnesota Twins or the New York Yankees.

Was it the moon? That'd be a stretch.

Whatever it was, this news story is now longer than Wednesday's council meeting.